MACAU (AFX) - Stanley Ho once dominated almost everything in Macau, the Chinese casino city that is overtaking the Las Vegas Strip as the world's biggest gambling center.
The lanky 85-year-old billionaire owned all of Macau's casinos, much of the land, its best hotels and even the fleet of high-speed ferries that shuttle high rollers to the former Portuguese enclave on China's southern coast.
But Ho lost his casino monopoly four years ago. Now his 17 casinos must compete with many of the biggest names in the game, like Wynn Resorts Ltd. and Las Vegas Sands Corp. As the brash Americans scrambled to build shiny casinos, Ho grumbled and plotted his new strategy.
On Sunday, Ho will punch back with his biggest project in 30 years. His new flagship casino opens in the $384 million Grand Lisboa Hotel, a gold tower with 430 rooms and a top designed to look like a giant lotus flower.
The casino will have to compete in the new Vegas-style Macau that Steve Wynn and the Sands' Sheldon Adelson hope to build: lots of bigger, glitzier casinos, replete with glamorous boutiques, fine dining, upscale theme parks, convention halls and shows.
The big question is whether Ho's company and his casinos can measure up after running nearly 40 years as with no competition. Some customers have long complained the service was surly, the carpets worn and the gaming halls smoky.
'The problem with the old Macau is that the casinos don't even treat you like a guest,' said Taiwanese tourist Johnny Chou. 'The people there really have to change their way of thinking.'
For decades, Ho has been one of the most colorful and prominent figures in Macau and neighboring Hong Kong. He has 17 children by four women he calls 'wives.' Despite his age and thinning hair, he remains an avid ballroom dancer and is always up for lively banter with reporters. But he declined several interview requests by The Associated Press.
Ho's life story has become an urban myth. He was born into a wealthy Hong Kong family that went broke during the Depression, forcing him to start from scratch at a trading firm in Macau.
He eventually lined up enough cash to win the bid for Macau's gaming franchise with his business partners in 1962. Today, he's ranked 84th on Forbes' 100 richest people in the world.
A large part of that fortune was made in Ho's flagship, called the Casino Lisboa, the iconic heart of gaming in Macau. The old Lisboa and Ho's other dated casinos belong to the Macau before the Americans arrived in the former Portuguese enclave, which returned to Chinese rule in 1999.
Now, Macau appears to have become the world's No. 1 gambling center. Last year, its gambling revenue jumped 22 percent to $6.95 billion. The Las Vegas Strip's revenue hit a record $6.69 billion but it wasn't enough to stay ahead of Macau, a Nevada state report said Friday.
Many believe Ho's empire badly needs a management overhaul and up-to-date facilities to catch up with the times. It will also need to adapt to changing gaming trends by relying less on hardcore 'VIP gamblers,' who are recruited in groups from mainland China and other parts of Asia by junkets that provide food, transportation and hotel rooms.
Analysts predict that revenue from high rollers will soon be overtaken by casual, mass-market gambling like slot machines -- a market likely dominated by American operators.
The company that operates Ho's casinos, the Sociedade de Jogos de Macau, or SJM, is still dominant, controlling 17 out of Macau's 24 casinos. But the group's share will dwindle until it holds just one-fourth of the market by 2009, according to a JPMorgan forecast.
'SJM's main challenge is how to compete in the mass market. They certainly have an advantage in the VIP market, but beyond the Lisboa and other top two or three casinos, their casinos aren't very competitive,' said Billy Ng, a JPMorgan research analyst.
SJM's director, Ambrose So, said the company is up for the challenge.
'Healthy competition is good for the industry overall, and we are ready for it,' he said.
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